If MPs think Parliament is bad for mothers, they should try getting a real job

There is much rot talked and Tweeted about how wonderful the life of an MP is. They get tax breaks the rest of us don’t (wrong), they can get an extra income by exploiting the expenses system (wrong), they get ridiculously long holidays (wrong-ish).

But one peculiar advantage, one that is rarely if ever taken advantage of, is that MPs are essentially self-employed, and not just for tax purposes. It is technically possible – and entirely legal – for someone to be elected at a general election, then head off to a beach in Spain for the next four or five years, never taking part in a vote, never answering a constituent’s letter, never showing up in the constituency, yet still being paid their salary every month.

I do not advocate such a course of action, naturally. I mention it simply to highlight how extraordinarily flexible and out of the ordinary the job of elected representative at Westminster is.

More family friendly t&cs and better, more affordable childcare are required. I know parents who have had to work for 0 after childcare cost

Such flexibility can be exploited, entirely legitimately and with the understanding of all but the most objectionable of constituents, in order to look after one’s children when they are on holiday from school and the House of Commons is not. Back in days of yore, in the mists of time, when Scottish Labour sent more than one representative to Westminster, the whips were well aware of the fact that Scottish MPs can expect to be at work for three or four weeks after the Scottish schools have finished for the summer. A good whips office will take this into account when planning parliamentary business; I never found any difficulty in getting time off to spend with the family while colleagues picked up my slack each July.

The Aberdeen North MP, Kirsty Blackman, was recently “censured” by House of Commons staff (a legal-sounding process of which I have never heard; in this case, I think it merely means a complaint was made) because she took her two children, aged two and four, into a select committee meeting with her. She had “no choice”, apparently, because she couldn’t find daycare in London.

Kids playing while I pop on load of washing between work. Juggling is reality for almost all families. Govts need to provide better support.

God knows I’ve been round the houses, both as an MP and before, trying to get child care sorted for each of my three sons when they were very young. It can be a heartbreaking nightmare for any parent, whatever their job.

But, as we’ve established, being an MP is not an ordinary job. Ms Blackman has been an MP for more than a year. She is well aware, therefore, of the fact that Scottish and English school holidays (and House of Commons recess dates) don’t match up. She would have faced exactly the same problem last year, and 12 months is a reasonable length of time to make suitable childcare arrangements. It’s certainly significantly longer than most parents are privileged to have.

The claim that she had “no choice” but to take her children into the committee requires further examination too. Because she did have a choice. She could have chosen to stay at home that day, or even taken her children into work and remained with them while they played in her office or in the Family Room (just off Lower Waiting, near Central Lobby). Who gave her “no choice” but to attend the select committee hearing? Her party whips? Her constituents? There is no “censure” for MPs who miss select committee meetings, other than, occasionally, a harsh word from a whip. And no whip worthy of the name would criticise a young parent for putting the care of her (or his) children above the need to attend a meeting.

Yet many of her own constituents will face much worse pressure than she. A bar worker who brought her young children into work because she had “no choice”, because she couldn’t find alternative care for them, could expect to face much worse than “censure”. A nurse or GP, ditto. Will Ms Blackman be campaigning to allow single fathers who work on construction sites to be able to take their toddlers to work, perhaps to play around the cement mixers while dad’s up on the scaffolding?

Is a lack of child care preventing such workers from applying for their jobs?

There are some work places that are simply not safe or healthy environments for young children, where it is not appropriate to work with a toddler on your knee.

Being a parent is hard work and employers should be making as much reasonable effort as possible to accommodate the family commitments of their employees. But I suspect few – certainly fewer than Ms Blackman might hope for – will have much sympathy for a well paid MP who can choose her own working hours, who can take, practically speaking, as much time off work as she likes without any impact on her finances, over, for example, a call centre worker.

The cry will again go up: Westminster should be leading the way in family-friendly practices. But when does “leading the way” become “give preferential treatment to an already privileged minority”?